


It's Midnight and I am alone.

by theloveeyouleftbehind



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers - Freeform, Bucky - Freeform, Captain America - Freeform, PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-10
Updated: 2015-12-10
Packaged: 2018-05-06 00:31:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5395889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theloveeyouleftbehind/pseuds/theloveeyouleftbehind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The struggle Bucky Barnes lives through everyday. The guilt. The PTSD. The tidal wave of emotions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Midnight and I am alone.

For Bucky Barnes, the days were terribly long, but the nights were longer. During the day he walked around Stark tower, listening in on conversations and pretending to be interested in Tony's lab projects and Steve's ideas of the future. But at night, that's when things got unbearable. He didn't like to talk about it, it made him feel silly and weak. A full grown man fearing what's hiding in the dark. A man heavily trained in fighting with a technologically advanced metal arm jumping at the slightest sound. But to Bucky, the small sounds that filled the night did not sound so small. When a door creaked he heard the snapping of metal binding him down to a table. When someone shouted he heard his own screams for help from years ago. When he heard footsteps he froze, thinking the people he had been running from for so long had found him, and they weren't going to let him escape this time. He was tired of staying up all night, huddled into a ball, because his head was playing games with him. The worst part of all, he thought, was when he knew he was over reacting and being absurd. But that's the thing about your head, you can tell it that it's ideas don't make sense, but it will still think about them. Your head doesn't disregard the impossible, it doesn't discard the thoughts that are too far fetched, it magnifies them. 

Bucky Barnes was tired of being tired. He wanted to sleep. He wanted to stop shaking. He wanted to be able to walk down the street to the store to pick up Steve's favorite beer without having a panic attack at the register when the man asked for his I.D. He wanted to be able to walk around the tower or walk around the city without people watching him like he was a ticking time bomb about to explode. But most of all, Bucky Barnes wanted to feel normal again.

But he was not normal. James Buchanan Barnes had spent so much of his young life trying to stand out, working extra hard to be noticed and fill the shoes his family had set out for him. He stood out now. He was noticed now. The thought made him sick. He never wanted this, but the world has a cruel sense of humor and gave him what he always and never wanted. 

Sometimes when Bucky was panicking and couldn't breathe he would list the facts he knew. His therapist called it grounding. He called it making a list of random shit in order to be sane again. 

Fact:  
1\. My name is James Buchanan Barnes  
Breathe.  
2\. I survived the war but was taken by Hydra  
Breathe.  
3\. They experimented on me. They changed me.  
Breathe  
4\. Steve Rogers saved my life  
Breathe  
5\. But maybe I didn't deserve to be saved

He never said the last one out loud, and he didn't dare say it in front of his therapist.  
But he thought about it.  
All the time.

Sometimes he thought about everything he did when he didn't have his memory. He must have killed at least a hundred people. If each of those people had a family, he destroyed a hundred families, destroying about three hundred lives. He took parents away from their children and now they have to grow up with strangers. He took children away from their parents, and now their mothers and fathers can never see them walk down the aisle or go to college. 

He ruined lives. 

When he thought of these things, sometimes he cried. Other times he got physically sick, when this happened he sometimes made it to the bathroom. Other times he didn't, and he couldn't get up and move away from it. He sat in his room, next to his own vomit thinking of the people he slaughtered. 

Bucky Barnes was not a bad man. But he was far from a great one.


End file.
